


and then there is you

by birthdaycandles



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alcohol, Canon Compliant, Friendship, Gen, Post S3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:29:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24905359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birthdaycandles/pseuds/birthdaycandles
Summary: Steve’s car is parked facing the mall, so they sit on the trunk and face the trees. Robin watches with her knees pulled up to her chin as he rummages around in the cooler, taking out the tequila and syrup they stole from his father’s liquor cabinet (“He doesn’t even know what he’s got in here, he won’t notice”) and the orange juice they bought at Melvald’s. It’s a good thing the fear of Starcourt is heavy enough to replace the fear of tequila, which Steve said tastes like drinking kerosene. Supposedly it won’t once he adds the other stuff. She’s skeptical.
Relationships: Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington
Comments: 9
Kudos: 98





	and then there is you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ButterCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterCat/gifts).



Starting around age fifteen, Robin began to feel behind the curve on rebellious teenage activities. 

For a long time she didn’t realize that other teenagers were engaging in these activities. She thought skinny dipping and partying every weekend were concepts made up on television, manufactured as a plot device to get characters to say things they wouldn’t normally say and stir up drama that would normally stay repressed. Real life would make for a boring soap opera that gets cancelled after its first season--or so she’d always thought. It wasn’t until sophomore year, embarrassingly late, that Robin realized other kids at school were doing these things. She just never knew because no one invited her to skinny dip or party. 

It was mostly fine. The kinds of people who engaged in these behaviors weren’t people she particularly liked, anyways, which was probably _why_ they didn’t invite her. Her friends were like-minded and calm, content to have sleepovers where the most exciting moment of the night was when someone plugged in a karaoke machine. Robin would occasionally sit in class on Monday mornings and listen to snippets of conversation about who hooked up with who at whoever’s party and who wore which heels to seduce which meathead basketball player and she’d always felt...confused. Confused because all weekend long she’d feel absolutely certain that her choices were superior to those of her peers, and yet every Monday morning she’d end up feeling like she’d missed something. She could never figure it out and it frustrated her to no end. 

Finally, just in time for the summer before senior year, Robin figured out that the sense of regret she felt every time a party passed her by wasn’t because somewhere deep inside she wanted to get wasted at some random classmate’s house, but because she wanted excitement. Any sort of excitement. 

Being taken hostage and interrogated by Russian soldiers only to be freed by two children and immediately accept the existence of giant monsters wasn’t exactly the way Robin expected to have her first taste of excitement, but she’ll take it. She had tried to articulate the realization she’d had that night, on the back of the ambulance her and Steve were given strict orders not to leave. They’d needed something to lighten the mood. 

“You know,” She’d tested out using her voice for the first time in fifteen minutes and found that it was raspy from the post-puking sore throat she had, “in a fucked up sort of way, I experienced a lot of...rites of passage. Tonight.”

Steve had laughed. It wasn’t as strong as the laughter from an hour ago because now the drugs and adrenaline were _really_ wearing off and he was slumped against her side, resting his head on her shoulder, but it was genuine and interested. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Like...first co-ed sleepover.”

“That was last night. And we didn’t really sleep.”

“Still counts.” She thought about it more. “And I did drugs.”

Another exhale of laughter, this one startled and slightly more alert. He’d shifted against her side like he was sitting up straighter. Robin was pretty sure he had a concussion, but none of the paramedics had made it to actually giving either of them thorough check-ups yet, so she had settled on keeping him awake just in case. 

“You got me beat there.” He conceded. “My first experience with drugs was when I was thirteen and I paid Nick Waverly twenty bucks for an edible that I’m pretty sure was actually just a regular brownie.”

Thirteen was...younger than Robin expected, to say the least. She knew almost everyone at school had a headstart on her, even Nancy Wheeler apparently, but at thirteen Robin didn’t even know what an edible was. She had looked over the ambulance parked beside theirs where Dustin was being held in a strangle hold by his mother, which made him look very small, and tried to imagine that thirteen year old meeting someone behind the middle school for a drug deal. She couldn’t. 

“Damn.” She’d murmured. A few days earlier, Robin probably wouldn’t have expressed her surprise. She would have just gone along with it for the sake of preserving the facade that she was just as experienced as everyone else--a facade that Steve probably saw through the moment he met her, anyways. That night felt different. It was possibly the fuzziness in her brain, like it was tuned into a radio station too far from Hawkins to produce anything but static and the occasional crackle of someone’s voice, but for whatever reason she felt like she could say anything to Steve and it would be okay. She already used up her biggest secret, anyways. The bandaid was ripped off and an already healing pink scar was left over. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t wasted all of high school doing nothing.”

“Nothing?” Steve had echoed, incredulous. “Band, theatre, soccer, that’s all nothing?”

“I don’t mean extra cirriculars, I mean…” She had been too tired to even articulate it. “Teenager stuff.”

His head had lolled back onto her shoulder, but his voice still sounded awake when he said, “Teenager stuff doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. I thought it did for so long, but what did I even get from it? A few months ago I didn’t even have any friends.”

“You had Dustin.” Robin pointed out. 

“Yeah.” He admitted, somehow making one word sound so warm and fond that she could feel her teeth rotting from how sweet it was. “But that wasn’t from partying every weekend or whatever. That was all luck.”

It was fascinating. Robin had friends, still _has_ friends, but none of them seemed particularly permanent. She often thought about college, when she’ll move out of Indiana and live far away with a whole new batch of people to socialize with. Will she miss the girls from her soccer team? The guys who she stands on stage and fakes conversation with while the leads deliver their lines? Maybe a little. Not a lot. Not the way, she’d been realizing all night with the first ever bit of dread accompanying the thought of going to college, she’ll miss Steve. 

She’d always thought maybe if they went through something together, she’d be more bonded with people. Running from cops with someone or being on their beer pong team or whatever. In theory she was right, but it wasn’t until Starcourt that she really refined the idea. Going through something _does_ bond you to someone. It just has to be a little more real than she’d initially thought.

“You’re all luck, too.” Steve had said after a few moments of silence, quiet and soft enough to make Robin feel like crying. 

“Don’t get all sappy on me, Harrington.” The laugh following the sentence hadn’t done anything at all to mask the way her voice wobbled under the weight of emotion. There was an opportunity for her to say something back, to express exactly how lucky she felt to have him, too, but Robin could never find the words. She’d spent years learning not to think about her feelings for the convenience of pretending they didn’t pose a problem. She didn’t know how to reverse that in just one night. So she’d said, lightly, “I do think maybe if drugs feel like this, I was smart to stay away from them.”

“Oh, they aren’t. Not all of them, I mean. And I always drank more than I smoked, anyways.”

“But alcohol is gross, right?”

“Doesn’t have to be. Have you ever had a tequila sunrise?”

She didn’t find out what a tequila sunrise was for another two months. A paramedic came over to check them out, which ruined the conversation about underage drinking almost immediately, and in the resulting blur of having blood drawn and painkiller administered, Robin forgot to ask. She thought about that conversation every night, though. 

In a way, it eased a lot of regrets. There’s no reason to mourn the lack of high school experiences when someone tells you firsthand that they aren’t that great anyways. But in place of that regret grew a new one, a heavier one that truly kept her awake for the following two months. 

Steve had basically compared their friendship to his friendship with Dustin, something she could tell from the moment she watched them do their elaborate handshake was as authentic as they come. He’d confidently asserted that their friendship was something real and important and worthy enough to be considered proof that Steve didn’t need to be King Steve at all.

And Robin hadn’t said anything back. 

This morning, September fourth, Robin is dragging a heavy cooler out of the back of Steve’s BMW and letting it fall out of her arms and onto the cracked asphalt of the parking lot that used to be Starcourt’s. Now it’s just a dead zone. The town doesn’t know what to do with the area yet, probably afraid that covering it up with another business venture would be insensitive to the thirty people that died. Robin agrees that it would be insensitive. She thinks it’s also insensitive to lie about why those thirty people died, but nothing’s perfect. 

They’re both nervous about being here. Robin had almost chickened out and suggested doing this somewhere else, and she’s pretty sure Steve would’ve hastily agreed if she had. But for whatever reason, it feels important to do this here. They both have an unspoken belief that maybe coming back here, pretending like it’s nothing more than a parking lot, will help them both with the hand tremors and the nightmares. Even if it makes her skin crawl to look at the big taped off rectangle where the foundation of the mall is still laying in ash. Even if it means waking up stupidly early to avoid the cops that sometimes drive around this area to bust people for trespassing.

Steve’s car is parked facing the mall, so they sit on the trunk and face the trees. Robin watches with her knees pulled up to her chin as he rummages around in the cooler, taking out the tequila and syrup they stole from his father’s liquor cabinet (“He doesn’t even know what he’s got in here, he won’t notice”) and the orange juice they bought at Melvald’s. It’s a good thing the fear of Starcourt is heavy enough to replace the fear of tequila, which Steve said tastes like drinking kerosene. Supposedly it won’t once he adds the other stuff. She’s skeptical. 

“Voila.” He presents her with a drink that looks surprisingly good. It doesn’t look much different than the slushies she’d get at the pool concession bar, honestly. The crystal wine glass it’s in makes it a bit more intimidating, but Steve had insisted that they can’t drink tequila out of regular plastic cups and all his mother had in the cabinet was these fancy glasses that Robin is scared to drop because they probably cost more than she ever made at Scoops. After a few moments of her hesitating to take it, Steve shoves it into her hand and bends back down to prepare his own. “It’s not going to kill you, Rob.”

“I know!” She holds the glass by the stem to avoid her palm going numb from the cold, which makes her feel like an adult. “If I don’t like it, are you gonna be mad?”

“No, that means I get two.”

He pops back up to join her on the trunk, making the BMW dip slightly under them. He holds out his own drink like he wants to cheers, and Robin knows that after cheers is the drinking part, so she chooses now to enact the idea she’d had earlier. “Wait! Hold on.”

Steve groans, like he’s been lost in the desert for days and this tequila sunrise is the first life-saving drop of hydration he’ll have, as she makes him hold her glass and hops off the back of the car. 

The drivers side door is unlocked. Robin leans in, grabs his keys from the seat to crank the car just enough for the headlights to illuminate the rubble in front of her in the pre-sunrise darkness and fill the car with the rock station he’d left them on. Robin focuses on the radio. She hasn’t listened to this station in so long, she’s almost certain she’s forgotten the number, but it comes back the second her hand is on the dial. 

The Bangles are playing. Robin turns it up. 

“Interesting choice.” Steve appraises when she returns and the middle of _Hero Takes a Fall_ is at just the right volume for them to hear from back here. He doesn’t look entirely upset about the song. 

“We’re doing something from your kinds of parties, we have to do something from mine too.”

“But we haven’t _done_ my thing yet.” Steve whines, shaking the two glasses just enough to emphasize his impatience but not so much that any precious liquid might slosh over the rim. 

“Okay, okay.”

“Are we doing a toast or not? We have to do a toast.”

“Sounds like we’re doing a toast.”

“I could do it because I’m sort of a great toaster _but_ I think it would be special if you do it for your first time.”

“Okay, I’ll do it.” Robin takes her glass back, this time holding it from the coldest part. Now is as good a time as any, and what she’s been wanting to tell him might seem a lot more sincere in the form of an actual toast. It makes it official, somehow. Better than passing conversation. Robin scooches around to face him, smiling almost automatically when she meets his eyes. It seems almost impossible that they were only here two months ago. She has his face memorized by now after spending almost every day together, even now that school has started, and spending some nights together when either of them has a nightmare freaky enough to motivate them to go tap on the other’s window. The scar on his lip is right where it always is. 

“Do you know how to start?”

“Shush.” She presses her glass to his cheek, making him jerk back from the sudden shock of cold. “Listen. I know I said all these things about how I wanted to be like you in high school, and how I wish I had all these experiences that you had. And you told me they aren’t all the great, y’know, which kind of made me feel better about never having them--

“It should.” Steve scoffs.

“--but now I think I didn’t really want the _experiences_ , I wanted someone to have them with. I wanted a friend. Like, a friend I could actually be myself with without having to be scared, you know? And I got that.”

The dawn is only just starting to lighten and the dim tail lights aren’t helping much, so she might be imagining the way his eyes are glistening. She’s not imagining it when he reaches over and grabs her hand, though, and Robin is glad. She’s glad it’s sinking in. She’s glad she could finally find the words to make it clear to him that the feeling of somehow being lucky enough to have what they have is mutual. 

“I think you’re better at toasts than I am.” Steve says, laughing in a way that sounds similar to hers two months ago. 

“Well if I like how this tastes, you can have the toast next time and we’ll see.”

“Deal.” He clicks his glass against hers and Robin takes a cautiously small sip. She’s surprised to find herself almost instinctively going for a bigger sip, which lasts longer than Steve’s and makes him laugh and excitedly bounce, the car creaking along with it. “ _See?_ I told you!”

“Oh my God.”

“I know! Tommy and all the other basketball guys never wanted to drink anything but beer or like, straight tequila. Stupid assholes.”

“So stupid.” Robin agrees, taking another sip. Her glass is almost empty already. The decision to bring along the whole cooler makes sense now, in hindsight. 

It’s a pretty good first party, honestly. If it doesn’t technically fit some peoples’ definition of a party, they’re being too picky. They have music and drinks and ambience in the form of the orange sun slowly rising above the trees, rising above Starcourt’s rubble and making it look a lot less menacing in the light, and bats fluttering around overhead when they lay against the back windshield. Steve occasionally murmurs something about rabies, but this wouldn’t be _theirs_ if there wasn’t some minute threat of danger. 

Robin is almost two weeks into her last year of high school, and she kind of thinks she can just relax this time around. All the important stuff is right next to her.

**Author's Note:**

> this was a gift for buttercat in exchange for a generous donation to support blm! just like before, im offering a fic of at least 1k words (probably more because i cant help myself) to anyone who makes a donation in support of black lives. you can talk to me about that on my tumblr @steveharrington or just talk in general :) title is from oh what a world by kacey musgraves


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